Facebook and Google are now two goliaths in the Internet marketing space. But search marketing and social marketing are very different. Can your Facebook efforts help your search marketing? Can search tactics help your social marketing? Marketing expert Brian Carter examines the myths and realities and gives you practical tips to get better results.

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Searchmostly in the form of Yahoo, Google and Binghas ruled the Internet for more than a decade. Google, and other search engines, have dominated Internet marketing and traffic. Around 2006, somewhere between 70%–90% of the traffic to most websites was from Google. By 2009, search was a $14.6 billion industry by 2009. In 2010, AdWords revenues were $28 billion.

But look out-here comes Facebook! By the end of 2011, Facebook’s ad revenues are expected to total between $2–$4 billion. What’s more, Facebook’s ad revenues are twice what Google’s were at the same stage of growth. Google, the Goliath of search, has not been able to achieve mass adoption of any of its social media offerings (Wave, Buzz, or Plus). Facebook and Google website visits have been neck and neck since August 2010. We now have two monster competitors.

While social media has knocked search about and proven to be an equal competitor, search is not going away, and in fact is also appearing in new forms, such as Facebook’s own internal search engine. This article examines where Facebook and traditional search engines meet, and what opportunities there are for businesses to take advantage of for extra traffic and sales.

Facebook Marketing Versus Search Marketing

Facebook’s social offerings and Google search offerings are apples and oranges. Companies can and should leverage both. And in some places they are intersecting:

Facebook has its own internal search engine, and on last report in June 2010 was serving 500 million search queries per day-certainly more now, perhaps as many as 1 billion per day. Does your Facebook page show up in internal searches when it should?

Facebook pages show up in Google, Yahoo, and Bing searches. Does your company’s page show up in these search engines on its first page of search results, and if not, what should you do?

Facebook may overhaul its search engine and enter the search business as a direct competitor to the big three. How will this impact online business and your job as a digital marketer?